Colston - dead man walking, flying, driving

Mal Colston is too sick to stand trial for fraud. But he's well enough to travel around the country at taxpayers' expense, and to run a business. Ben Hills investigates.

Steptoe Street, Chapel Hill, snoozes under a tropical sun, with not a pedestrian or a passing car to disturb the crimson bougainvillea vines and jacaranda trees flowering in the leafy front yards.

Last year this quiet street in suburban Brisbane was the scene of a frantic media stake-out, as reporters and TV crews jostled around the driveway of number 43, hoping for a glimpse of, or a comment from, the suburb's most notorious resident - 64-year-old former senator Malcolm Colston.

It had just been announced from Canberra that charges against Dr Colston - his PhD is in education - of defrauding the Commonwealth of $6350 by lying about his travel expenses had been dropped "based on expert medical evidence that Dr Colston had a terminal illness [and] was unfit to stand trial".

Twenty months later, the Director of Public Prosecutions, Damian Bugg, has announced yet another review of his case. It is the third since Colston was first charged in 1997 - when his supporters leaked news to the media that he had cancer, and his doctors had predicted that there was a "10 to 20 per cent chance he would die in the next few days".

Now, as then, there was no response from Colston or his family to a request for comment on his astounding ability to defy the medical odds. The shutters of his comfortable brick house remained closed, the door unanswered.");document.write("

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In the five years since his terminal illness became public, the initial flush of sympathy for the ex-senator has been replaced by doubts about the accuracy of the diagnosis.

Still grossly obese, the man who once trundled through Parliament in an electric wheelchair has been spotted walking through his local shopping centre, and the Government has been forced to reveal that he has used up $6000 worth of free car and air travel in the past few years. The Herald has learned that Colston has been diagnosed as suffering from cancer of the bile duct - the canal which drains bile from the gall bladder, where it is stored, to the small intestine, where it plays a part in dissolving dietary fat.

It is so rare that it makes up less than 1 per cent of all cancers.

The three Brisbane specialists who originally examined Colston would not comment directly on the case, citing privacy. But they were unanimous in their opinion nearly four years ago that Colston was dying and unfit to stand trial.

Their view was confirmed by two more experts "from the south" who have so far not been identified.

One of the original specialists, Stephen Lynch, associate professor of surgery at Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane, said in a report produced to the Canberra Magistrates Court in March 1999: "I would consider it extremely unlikely that Senator Colston would be still alive in three months. His disease is at the end stage, he spends long periods of the day sleeping, and he needs assistance dressing."

Dr Lynch "speaking generically" told the Herald this week that the cancer was inoperable. It was being treated by brachytherapy, a procedure in which a tiny piece of irradiated iridium wire is inserted into the body to deliver a dose of radiation directly into the tumour.

However, he insisted that no diagnosis could be 100 per cent certain, and "at no stage did I say that it was impossible" for Colston to live a number of years. This was particularly so in this case where the experts had not been able to biopsy the suspected cancer, because it would have involved a life-threatening operation. Instead they had to rely on scans, and Colston's general clinical picture.

Michael Barton, who did not treat Colston, is a radiotherapy expert in charge of cancer therapy at Liverpool Hospital and Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of NSW. He confirmed that it was difficult to biopsy suspected bile-duct cancer "because it is a difficult area to get at, right at the back of the abdomen".

He added that without a biopsy there was a risk of a "false positive" diagnosis in which chronic scarring due to gallstones or disease could be mistaken for cancer.

Dr Barton said that, because it was so rare, there were "no good figures" on survival rates of patients with bile-duct cancer treated with brachytherapy. If it was this type of cancer, he said, "eventually it will spread and cause death, in a matter of months or years at the most. It is pretty unusual for a patient to survive more than two or three years."

So, there is the dilemma facing the doctors - to be certain about the diagnosis would involve an operation that might kill the patient.

The second mystery is just how Colston's illness - whatever it is - is really affecting his ability to function. Two years ago, in his only interview since the charges were dropped, he apologised to his enemies for not having died, protested his innocence, and said: "If I had the health to go to court I would have."

So he says he is unfit for the rigours of a trial. But he has been flitting up and down to Canberra, where one of his sons lives, first class by Commonwealth car and plane.

His local fish-shop proprietor has told a reporter he occasionally pops in for a bit of snapper and a Greek salad. And now there's more.

Number 43 may look like a normal suburban residence, but it is the registered office of three separate businesses run by the Colston family, presumably with the assistance of the $1.5 million of mostly-taxpayer-funded money that he retired with.

Australia's corporate disclosure laws allow us to know precisely nothing about the nature of these businesses, their assets, or their balance sheets. However, we do know that one of them, Janfern Pty Ltd, is controlled by Malcolm Arthur Colston and his 56-year-old wife Dawn Patricia.

Mal Colston was well enough, in November 2001, to lodge the company's latest annual return as one of its directors, and well enough to legally certify to the Australian Securities and Exchange Commission that the return was accurate, and that the company was able to pay its debts as and when they fell due.

Mal and Dawn Colston are also directors of a second company registered at their home, Lorelei Pty Ltd. Classical scholars will know that the Lorelei was a siren who lured sailors onto a rock in the River Rhine with her seductive singing.

And son David - who with his brother Douglas starred on TV in the role of bodyguard - also gives the same address and is proprietor of a third company, intriguingly named The Australian Internet Hosting Company Pty Ltd.

Damian Bugg refused to elaborate to the Herald on what this latest review of the case involved, whether Colston would be examined again, or even when he would be ready to announce whether or not the charges would finally go ahead.

However, one thing is abundantly clear whether or not he has cancer: Mal Colston has proved to be one of the great survivors of Australian politics.